Some Thoughts on the State of Lesbian Filmmaking in the US (part 3 of 5)
LGBTQ FILMS/ INFLUENCES
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To read all 5 parts of the article, click on the links below:
Some Thoughts on the State of Lesbian Filmmaking in the US (part 1 of 5) INTRO (2018)
Some Thoughts on the State of Lesbian Filmmaking in the US (part 2 of 5)(2018)
Some Thoughts on the State of Lesbian Filmmaking in the US (part 3 of 5) LGBTQ FILMS/ INFLUENCES (2018)
Some Thoughts on the State of Lesbian Filmmaking in the US (part 5 of 5) CONCLUSION (2018)
Or read the article in its’ entirely by clicking on the link below:
Some Thoughts on the State of Lesbian Filmmaking in the US (part 1–5) (2018) (Original Article in its’ Entirety.)
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LGBTQ FILMS/ INFLUENCES
It seems to me that this kind of thing keeps happening every couple of years, (or almost every year really,) that a tiny little cluster of really great lesbian films get made practically simultaneously or back to back, and on shoestring budgets no less.
In the early 1990’s, at the onset of what film critic Ruby Rich dubbed the ‘New Queer Cinema,’ there was Rose Troche’s ‘Go Fish’ (1994) and Maria Maggenti’s ‘The Incredibly True Adventures of Two Girls in Love’ (1995,) and another one of my all-time favorites, Mary Harron’s ‘I Shot Andy Warhol,’ (1996) with Lili Taylor in the lead as Valerie Solanas, in my opinion in her strongest role ever, and Lili Taylor is a great actress, and in the 90’s was basically dubbed “the queen of indie cinema” amongst independent filmmakers and film lovers.
(Some say that distinction went to Parker Posey, who’s also awesome but in my circles it was definitely Lili Taylor.
In 2003, if things couldn’t get any better, I had the honor of being a “celebrity escort” to Lili Taylor at that year’s Independent Spirit Awards, which basically means making sure a particular celebrity gets to their assigned table, gets their food and drinks, their gift bags, their car parked, and very importantly and gets to the stage exactly on time to do their part in giving out an award to that year’s nominees, since it’s a live show and all, so this was a lot of fun, especially since I’m a big Lili Taylor fan.)
And in 1997 there was ‘Mrs Dalloway,’ about Virginia Woolf, directed by Marleen Gorris.
And of course some very important gay male films preceded all of this, and mostly lauded in this ‘New Queer Cinema,’ Gus Van Sant’s ‘My Own Private Idaho (1991,) and Even Cowgirls Get The Blues’ (1993,) ’Tom Kalin’s ‘Swoon’ (1992,) Gregg Araki’s ‘The Living End’ (1992,) and his ‘Mysterious Skin’ from 2004 was also exceptional.
And maybe it all started with Jenni Livingston’s ‘Paris is Burning’ from 1990, one of the greatest documentaries ever, even though I’m primarily focussing on narrative feature films in this piece, or maybe Bill Sherwood’s ‘Parting Glances’ (1986,) and maybe there was no official start to it all, as there have always been LGBTQ films, and no official end either, as there hopefully will always be more LGBTQ films in the future.
Of course in 1993 there was also Jonathan Demme’s ‘Philadelphia,’ technically more mainstream, and maybe therefore noteworthy, as not too many heterosexual and mainstream actors and directors wanted to touch LGBTQ stories in those days. And there was the artsy, and somewhat camp Anais Nin inspired ‘Henry and June’ by Philip Kaufman from 1990, (and which I had to wait for until 1991 as I was still living in the Netherlands at the time and the release dates between American films premiering in the US and their subsequent European premieres could sometimes span a whole year,) which officially started my personal introduction into lesbian films in particular, and so I absolutely loved it, maybe to a default.
I had in fact seen ‘The Color Purple’ (1985,) and so this technically officially introduced me to lesbian stories on screen, but while the lesbian storyline did not escape me, it wasn’t quite as explicit as ‘Henry and June,’ which really made me take notice, I guess. (And really, the ‘Henry and June’ NC-17 rating, which was part of the reason I was drawn to it as well, was completely redundant, and while the film seems explicit, more through suggestiveness than anything, it really isn’t that explicit at all, and certainly not for European standards.)
I had actually seen gay male and trans-women stories before the 1990s however, Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s ‘Querelle’ from 1982, which had kind of freaked me out, not because it dealt with gay male sexuality, but more the overall tone of it, and William Friedkin’s ‘Cruising’ from 1980, and Hector Babenco’s ‘Kiss of the Spider Woman’ from 1985, and Uli Edel’s ‘Last Exit to Brooklyn’ from 1989.
And of course Sidney Lumet’s ‘Dog Day Afternoon’ from 1974, which was the only one of them I could watch over and over, and I absolutely loved. The rest of them just seemed too scary and too unfamiliar to me at the time.
(And I did love Billy Wilder’s hilarious classic ‘Some Like It Hot’ as well but I guess it was so over the top I didn’t ultimately completely see it as a gay or trans-film, as the storyline definitely doesn’t start out that way but in typical Wilder fashion does actually kind of become that. His films often seem to deal with characters pretending to be someone else and then losing themselves in those roles, which is partially why his films are so funny to begin with.)
Towards the end of the 90’s, (and the decade thus known as the “New Queer Cinema,’) two more super strong films came out, the first one another debut by a lesbian filmmaker, and another great low budget, independent film, Lisa Cholodenko’s ‘High Art’ (1998.)
And the second one not technically a lesbian film but a trans-male one, to be included here because transgender films are sorely underrepresented even within LGBTQ filmmaking, and this was of course Kimberly Peirce’s ‘Boys Don’t Cry’ (1999,) which was of particular importance to me personally as it shed light for the first time ever on my own gender identity.
(After a lot of sorting out of labels and identities as late as 2012 I ended up identifying as trans-masculine and gender nonconforming, and had long been out as a lesbian before that, and I decided to keep that label, as pertaining to my sexual orientation, as well.
And I came to watch and love ‘Boys Don’t Cry’ through a particularly strange but fortunate event as well, as it was none other than Hilary Swank who recommended the film to me, in person, when she stopped by my work at the time, the Laemmle’s Monica 4-Plex where I was a box office person throughout the 90’s, and she bought a ticket to another film.
She made a very insightful assessment, after staring at me for some time, and hesitantly told me that I should watch her film, pointing at the poster of ‘Boys Don’t Cry’ hanging on the lobby wall, and “not because she was in it,” she assured me, but because she thought “I might find it very interesting,” (her words,) and she couldn’t have been more right. That film was nothing less than life altering for me, as I saw for the first time in my life, and my own filmmaking aspirations, a character on screen whose identity closely resembled mine. And of course I became a huge Kimberly Peirce fan after that as well.
Also worth mentioning, from 1999, ‘The Talented Mr. Ripley’ by the brilliantly poetic, gone too soon director Anthony Minghella, and Julian Schnabel’s biopics ‘Basquiat’ (1996) about Jean-Michel Basquiat and ‘Before Night Falls’ (2000) about Reinaldo Arenas, and of course Todd Haynes’ ‘Velvet Goldmine’ (1998) is absolutely fantastic and Todd Haynes one of the most innovative filmmakers ever, and such a cool guy as well.
And then, after the ‘New Queer Cinema’ was kind of over, I think, or maybe it never truly ended, in 2002, one of the strongest lesbian films ever came out, Stephen Daldry’s ‘The Hours,’ based on Virginia Woolf’s life and smartly interwoven with two other, fictional characters, in three separate stories, which continually interweave and inform each other. Truly a masterpiece in storytelling.
And then Patty Jenkings’ excellent film ‘Monster’ (2003,) and in 2007 Todd Haynes did the impossible with his Bob Dylan film, played by seven different actors, with notably Cate Blanchett as the “electric” Dylan. This is of course technically not an LGBTQ film, though its’ director is, but the attractive spin of having a woman play a highly androgynous Dylan, and involved with a woman, Michelle Williams’ character, makes that segment feel a little bit like a lesbian or trans-male story.
Then in 2008, Gus Van Sant’s Harvey Milk story ‘Milk.’ and in 2010 ‘Howl,’ by Jeffrey Friedman and Rob Epstein, (the fantastic documentary team behind ‘The Times of Harvey Milk,’ ‘The Celluloid Closet’ and more,) the highly original and structurally innovate story of Allen Ginsberg’s epic poem ‘Howl’ and the obscenity trials it caused, with absolute superior animation by artist Eric Drooker.
And there’s more many more great lesbian films, and more great LGBTQ films in general, and most notably the recent string of some of the absolute greatest LGBTQ films altogether, Todd Haynes’ ‘Carol’ (2015,) (there was also Tom Hooper’s ‘The Danish Girl’ in that same year, 2015, although I didn’t absolutely love it it is still a very important film, as well as the 2013 ‘The Dallas Buyers Club’ by Jean-Marc Vallee, about which I also have some mixed feelings, but which was an overall very strong story with very good performances,) and from 2016 the super interesting, highly poetic and experimental ‘The Royal Road’ by Jenni Olson.
And then there’s Andrew Ahn’s ‘Spa Night’ (2016, winner of 2017’s John Cassavetes Award at the Spirit Awards) and of course Barry Jenkins’ ‘Moonlight’ (2016,) Best Picture winner at both the 2017 Spirit Awards and of course the Oscars.
I’ve surely left out many great LGBTQ films in this little summation but the most important thing of it all I think is that these are all low budget films, (with the exceptions of the slightly higher production costs of some, ’The Hours,’ ‘Mr. Ripley,’ ‘Carol,’ etc., even though all are still well within the realms of low budget filmmaking compared to a lot of other more mainstream stuff that’s out there,) and besides truly great lesbian-, and LGBTQ, films in general of course.
And I personally think this is really, really important, this low budget aspect of it, because it is what makes these niche films, about a very underrepresented part of society, the LGBTQ community, possible at all. I think this is truly something to keep in mind, and to even strive for, to stay within the low budget realm of filmmaking, not only because it is creatively challenging in the best ways possible, but because the LGBTQ community doesn’t get the same funding opportunities than our heterosexual filmmaking counterparts, and this is something we should be very conscious of and it should not stop us from making films that represent us.
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My name is Gabriella Bregman, I am a Hollywood-based Writer, Filmmaker and Producer, currently in production of a Feature Documentary about LGBTQ US-Immigration Exclusion-Policy, including my personal story of US immigration discrimination during DOMA, (Defense Of Marriage Act, of 1996–2015,) titled ‘The Queer Case for Individual Rights,’ through my film production company Bregman Films.
The 2001 John Cassavetes Film Retrospective ‘Gena and John: A Cassavetes Retrospective’ at the Laemmle Theatres in Los Angeles is a Bregman Films Production.
I am also the Founder of a Nonprofit Film Organization Queer Female Filmmakers Los Angeles — A Media Site & LA Film Mixers (2018.)
In 2018 I am publishing my story and essays in a book, titled ‘The Queer Case for Individual Rights & Other Essays.’
I identify as a Gender Nonconforming Lesbian, “non-op” Trans-Masculine, and Bi-Racial, from the Netherlands, Los Angeles-based.
My pronouns are: they/them/theirs.
Please check out my other articles on LGBTQ- and Immigration Issues, the State of Women and LGBTQ People in Film, and Lesbian/Queer Film as well as Queer Female Sexuality and Gender Identity at medium.com/@gabriellabregman
A few titles:
Resume/FILM BIO: Gabriella Bregman (2018) (2018)
2018 Update on Documentary ‘The Queer Case for Individual Rights’ (2018)
A Note on the State of Women in Film (2016)
A Few Notes On LGBTQ Filmmaking (2017)
Some Thoughts on the State of Lesbian Filmmaking in the US (part 1 of 5) (2018)
John Cassavetes Film Retrospective (2001) (2018)
On ‘Moonlight’ and the Subject of Positive Representation (2017)
My 2018 Oscar Pick for Best Picture (2018)
In Defense of Rationality (2018)
In Defense of Individual Rights (2018)
A Few Notes on US Immigration Exclusion Policies Towards Women- and LGBTQ Immigrants (2014)
The Root Cause Of Misogyny, And The Necessity Of Free Will (Gender Binary System notes, part 1 of 7) (2016)
The Male And Female Brain, And The “Cause” Of Transgenderism (Gender Binary System notes, part 2 of 7) (2016)
The Gender-Binary System Was Created For Population Control And Slavery, Including Sex Slavery (Gender Binary System notes, part 7 of 7)
All Articles Written by Gabriella Bregman (TM). All Pictures Owned by Gabriella Bregman (TM). All Rights Reserved (2018)
